Chapter 89

82 MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE where they were found might have been naturally entertained. There is no real evidence, although ‘Le Soled’ so supposes, that the articles discovered had been more than a few days in the thicket; while there is much circumstantial proof that they could not have remained there, without attracting attention, during the twenty days elapsing between the fatal Sunday and the afternoon upon which they were found by the boys. ‘They were all mildewed down hard/ says ‘Le Soleil/ adopting the opinions of its predecessors, ‘with the action of the rain, and stuck together from mildew . The grass had grown around and over some of them. The silk of the parasol was strong, but the threads of it were run together within. The upper part, where it had been doubled and folded, was all mildewed and rotten, and tore on being opened/ In respect to the grass having ‘grown around and over some of them/ it is obvious that the fact could only have been ascertained from the words, and thus from the recollections, of two small boys; for these boys removed the articles and took them home before they had been seen by a third party. But grass will grow, especially in warm and damp weather (such as was that of the period of the murder), as much as two or three inches in a single day. A parasol lying upon a newly-turfed ground might in a single week be entirely concealed from sight by the upspringing grass. And touching that mildew, upon which the editor of ‘Le Soleib so pertinaciously insists, that he employs the word no less than three times in the brief paragraph just quoted, is he really unaware of the nature of this mildew? Is he to be told that it is one of the many classes of fungus , of which the most ordinary feature is its upspringing and decadence within twenty-four hours? “Thus we see at a glance that what has been most triumphantly adduced in support of the idea that the articles had been ‘for at least three or four weeks’ in the thicket is most absurdly null as regards any evidence